I'm a man for whom the outside world is an inner Reality.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that one's perception of the world is shaped by internal experiences rather than external observations.
Fernando Pessoa's quote reflects a philosophical perspective that emphasizes the significance of inner thoughts and feelings in shaping an individual's understanding of reality. It implies that the way we interpret the outside world is deeply influenced by our inner state, suggesting that our perceptions and experiences are more subjective than objective, and that our internal reality defines how we engage with the world around us.
In practice
During a lecture on existentialism, this quote can be used to illustrate the importance of subjective experience.
I have at this moment so many fundamental thoughts, so many truly metaphysical things to say, that I suddenly get tired and decide not to write any more, not to think any more, but to allow the fever of speaking to make me sleepy, and with my eyes closed, like a cat, I play with everything I could have said.
It's been months since I last wrote. I've lived in a state of mental slumber, leading the life of someone else. I've felt, very often, a vicarious happiness. I haven't existed. I've been someone else. I've lived without thinking.
We all have two lives: The true, the one we dreamed of in childhood And go on dreaming of as adults in a substratum of mist; the false, the one we love when we live with others, the practical, the useful, the one we end up by being put in a coffin.
My dreams are a stupid refuge, like an umbrella against a thunderbolt.
The chill of what I won't feel gnaws at my present heart.
Friends: not one. Just a few acquaintances who imagine they feel something for me and who might be sorry if a train ran over me and the funeral was on a rainy day.
Reality is not always probable, or likely.
Being an American means never having to say you're sorry.
Many introverts feel there's something wrong with them, and try to pass as extroverts. But whenever you try to pass as something you're not, you lose a part of yourself along the way. You especially lose a sense of how to spend your time.
When a man wantonly destroys one of the works of man we call him a vandal. When he destroys one of the works of god we call him a sportsman.
I believe that if we don't offer legal ways of emigrating to Europe and immigrating within Europe, we will be lost. If those who come - who are, generally speaking, the poor and needy - are no longer able to enter the house of Europe through the front door, they'll keep making their way in through the back windows.
Freedom is not merely the opportunity to do as one pleases; neither is it merely the opportunity to choose between set alternatives. Freedom is, first of all, the chance to formulate the available choices, to argue over them -- and then, the opportunity to choose.
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